Gormongous

Several articles I've read mention that attacks occasionally occur while the player is logged in and that Blizzard's servers often have no record of the incursion. This has been repeated way too many times for user error to explain all cases, I think. Rumor has it that Blizzard's credentials structure does encourage brute forcing with no case sensitivity and unlimited retries, though.

"Scintillating graphics", I love it! This is one copywriter for whom boredom is inspiration.

And the "optimal" stat distributions were really counter-intuitive, too. Every class except the Sorceress had to pour pretty much all its points into Vitality, since every other stat started experiencing vastly diminishing returns past 50 or 60. I don't really miss that, I just miss the feeling that having a lot of moving parts exposed and within reach gave me. I should probably just finish my second The Witcher 2 playthrough if that's what I'm craving, though.

Just a heads up to people on the fence that there's now a demo available on the game's website here. I haven't played it, so I can't comment on the scenario that's included, but I can comment on how incredibly small the filesize is. At eighty-one megs, I half expect the "demo" to be the main menu and maybe a midi version of the menu music...

If so, that really undermines the main argument I keep hearing about how Blizzard's system of recombinant linear unlocks have made branching skill paths obsolete. If the current system is in place more to facilitate decision-making rather than to balance gameplay, I wonder what inspired Blizzard to leave the honored skill-tree with respec behind. I mean, they don't innovate for the sake of innovating, not anymore, right?

I can see the design brilliance of it, but it still bothers me. Every single possible skill and kit combination has already been foreseen by Blizzard and tested to death, so there's no real sense of discovering a build and perfecting it, just falling into one of the roles Blizzard has made ready for me at its table. Nothing really wrong with that, but it does kind of kill longevity.

Looks like you just enter a short period where every hit is a critical, though there are passive skills that add other effects into the mix. I have to admit that the Embermage is my favorite playthrough thus far, which is weird because I hate playing ranged DPS.

I was actually just playing through with the Embermage and having too much of a blast to quit until now. With the Engineer, the "charge" mechanic (as it's called in the game) is merely five points you fill in a meter hovering awkwardly above the main UI (this, in addition to the need for a quick-map hotkey and a clear statement of a spell's damage, constitutes my only complaint about the game thus far). These points are spent automatically when you cast certain spells for a supercharged version, e.g. the tongues of fire a hammer-slam sends out are doubled and seek out enemies. With the Embermage, it's a bar that fills up, and once it's full you have ten seconds of infinite mana and increased damage. It gives a great rhythm to the play that is really empowering -- kill all the small fry around the boss, then explode in a frenzy of flaming death for ten seconds to take out the big guy himself. This dynamic alone has me considering a preorder for a game that was solidly a wait-and-see before.

The Engineer is oriented more towards two-handed weapons than the Berserker, but more pointedly the Engineer's "Blitz" tree is focused on piling different status effects on the target in addition to damage, while the Berserker's "Hunter" tree is about building and enhancing its "rage" mechanic. I mean, all classes have a "rage" or similar momentum-driving mechanic, but most of the Berserker's skills involve tangible benefits to keeping it high, while the Engineer purely uses it as currency to enhance specific attacks.

Okay, let's see. Engineer: Blitz (mostly two-handed damage skills), Construction (minions and their maintenance), and Aegis (shield and armor enhancement). Embermage: Inferno (fire and damage skills), Frost (ice and protection skills), and Storm (electrical and buff skills). Berserker: Hunter (melee damage and buff skills), Tundra (crowd control and area-of-effect skills), and Shadow (summoning, shapeshifting, and the kitchen sink). Outlander: Warfare (ranged and area-of-effect damage skills), Lore (debuff and crowd control skills, mostly focused on glaives), and Sigil (curses and traps). Of course, that's horribly oversimplifying things, since the skill trees are more strongly oriented around a theme than any constellation of synergistic powers. Overall, the Berserker looks the most straightforward (read: boring), but they all have decent overlap for solo play with enough diversity to encourage grouping.

I just beat the first act, so I'm done with the beta for now. I'll hang around while doing laundry today and answer any questions you manage to post before the beta closes tonight. Fair warning, a large chunk of high-level skills are hidden for beta testers, with only fifteen to eighteen left visible for each of the four classes.

That's weird, I was just thinking that the amount of leeway it gives you is a breath of fresh air, after the tightly authored experience of Diablo 3. Diff'rent strokes, I guess.

And now the Road to Enlightenment kickstarter is beckoning to me, even though it would probably suffer the same fate as Here I Stand should I try and convince my group to play.

I just have to say that this might be one of the best pods I've heard you guys cast. I mean, the Phaedrus Family is great and all, but I always had to cringe if my girlfriend was around while Idle Thumbs was in rape-and-poop mode. I played some snatches of this for her today and she was almost won over just listening to Sean talk about dealing with otherness and privilege as issues that games can and should explore. I know you guys are really hesitant to discuss on air the games you make rather than play, whether because of professional concerns or a desire not to appear self-involved, but it was a really great experience for me that I hope happens again. I'm also checking out Cloud Atlas from my school's library, which I'll be keeping around for the next year or so until it gets discussed on the book cast, courtesy of my status as venerable grad student.

Yeah, maybe it's due to their professional background, but there was very little acknowledgement of designer intentionality by Haugland. The game is what it is, I guess.

This, pretty much. Crossbows snap and quarrels whistle, but nothing can match the smoke and thunder of a massed gunpowder barrage. It confuses men, terrifies horses, and covers the battlefield in a dense miasma. Sure, that may not seem like much compared to the practical effects of traditional ranged units in equal number, but when you consider that it could all be accomplished by a handful of peasants with a couple weeks of training, it's not hard to see why the changeover took place in the span of barely a generation.

My biggest problem with cheating AI in games of system mastery like most strategy titles is that it has the tendency of undermining or totally negating a player's accomplishments, breaking the flow of learning and enjoyment that forms the basis of a gameplay experience. If I work hard and gain the skills necessary to annihilate an enemy's entire army in combat, I shouldn't find another one ready-made when I move on to conquer his capital. If I spend time and money building up an infrastructure that can successfully bid for projects in the big leagues, I shouldn't be trumped by money just handed out for free in order to give me a challenge. That's rewarding accomplishment with further punishments, in my opinion. If the player can only be competed with by blatantly breaking the rules for AI opponents, doesn't that suggest that this game hasn't been designed properly with singleplayer dynamics in mind?

Bruce talks about this a lot on the podcast especially. Many strategy gamers think they want realism, when in fact they just want granularity of decisions. You just have to trust that the developers have the clarity of vision to avoid making their game everything to everyone.

That's the problem, isn't it? Once a game has been labeled as a time sink, little can save it in a group's eyes, least of all the promise that it will play quick and smooth the fourth time through. It almost makes you want to hold off introducing your big finds until you're sure you can give the best impression possible.

Nah, just $60. That's good news, though. Pikmin 2 is a blast.

Agreed. I have a monster connection, thanks mostly to an abusive relationship with my ISP, and I was getting serious latency spikes every few minutes. I know it's a stress test and all, but I don't remember it being this bad back when Diablo 2 was being tested. Still, it seemed as though the bandwidth it hogged was the only ambitious part about Diablo III. The strict unlock path and anemic gear chase leave it with less player agency than certain entries in the Dungeon Siege franchise, and no amount of production values can make me comfortable with that. Torchlight 2, Path of Exile, and Grim Dawn are all better options, in my mind. If someone buys me a copy, I might play a bit, but otherwise I'm off the Blizzard wagon.

Hey everybody, been posting around here for a couple weeks and thought I'd say hello. Longtime fan of the podcast, less a fan of forums, but the Three Moves Ahead thing convinced me to register. I'll try my best not to default into lurking, honest!

Not quite done listening to the podcast, but I wanted to duck in while the going's hot and voice my agreement with the simulationist/narrativist tension you guys discerned in recent Total War games. I think Creative Assembly has gradually become aware of the power that atmosphere holds, in addition to the more obvious power of systems, but has not quite learned how to subordinate the latter to the former. For instance, one of the developer diaries for Fall of the Samurai trumpeted how much they had to exaggerate the combat prowess of the samurai to make them a credible challenge to modern professional armies. Now, I've learned from practice that the sword still isn't going to triumph over the rifle in this game, save through superior numbers or tactics, but I think that reflects a gameplay philosophy in transition, rather than a failure of vision. If Creative Assembly were devoted to a simulationist sandbox, immediate modernization would be the only option. If they wanted the player to take part in a narrative, both options would be viable if asymmetrical. Instead, we get a mix of both, where samurai are unintuitively effective but ultimately obsolete. It's still an interesting dichotomy, but one reflected elsewhere in the game only inconsistently. Myself, I wouldn't mind seeing Creative Assembly move even further towards a more narrativist approach, not least because Rome will probably be their next subject and I want to see it done right, but also because their games have never quite gotten the simulation aspect down pat, even at their nittiest and grittiest. Case in point, the AI still can't play Shogun 2 according to the same ruleset as the player, even with all the compromises in place. Daimyos respawn if killed, units get free experience upgrades, faction income is heavily subsidized, and truces are frequently called to dogpile the player. At its best, you're living the life of a warlord in feudal Japan. At its worst, you're watching the computer put on a puppet show for your benefit. If I have to deal with all that, I'd rather they design the show from the ground up to be worth watching.

This resembles my experience from the game when I finally got around to playing it a month or so ago. I spent the first few hours feeling powerless and confused, trying to headshot people with the awful rivet gun, and that persisted until I got my first fully upgraded weapon, which was around the same time I had four or five guns and three or four plasmids. At that point, I totally fell in love with the gameplay, which had been pretty underwhelming thus far. I guess it's a matter of granularity? In a way, it feels like the opening of Bioshock 2 is stingy with combat options to maintain some level of atmosphere, a technique that most of us fresh from the first game resent. In fact, they skirt dangerously close to KotOR 2 territory, where you spend the first couple hours running fetch quests naked while people make fun of you for being naked and useless (the main reason I haven't replayed that game with the new content mods).

This resembles my experience from the game when I finally got around to playing it a month or so ago. I spent the first few hours feeling powerless and confused, trying to headshot people with the awful rivet gun, and that persisted until I got my first fully upgraded weapon, which was around the same time I had four or five guns and three or four plasmids. At that point, I totally fell in love with the gameplay, which had been pretty underwhelming thus far. I guess it's a matter of granularity? In a way, it feels like the opening of Bioshock 2 is stingy with combat options to keep atmosphere in the beginning, which most of us fresh from the first game resent. In fact, they skirt dangerously close to KotOR 2 territory, where you spend the first couple hours running fetch quests naked while people make fun of you for being naked and useless (the main reason I haven't replayed that game with the new content mods).